Geo GeoBook 1E Education Laptops - HORRIBLE!

[localzuk]

they are awful- had the same. Official advice from Geo was to drain the battery as this resets the bios!

That's astonishing.

[kidpressingbuttons]

I changed the boot speed and boot order- once saved the laptop would only boot to a black screen!

[tooplanx]

I would like to wade in with my own, personal experience of Geobooks.

 

I have a Geobook 3x which I got for about £90, and it is fantastic for the price. The eMMC storage is pretty sluggish, but it had a slot for m.2 so upgraded with 128gb ssd and it great for almost anything 'normal'.

 

Only time it feels sluggish is if I have loads of tabs and programs open or have a very complex and large office document and try to move multiple objects at once.

 

Just thought I'd give a different opinion!

[RandomName]

Has anyone managed to successfully PXE boot into MDT? We have tried 4 different USB Ethernet adapters at 3 different schools, each with the same result...

 

>>Checking Media Presence......>>Media Present......>>Start PXE over IPv4.

 

It then drops back into the BIOS. Perhaps we are overlooking a BIOS setting

Edited November 12, 2020 by RandomName

[kidpressingbuttons]

Has anyone managed to successfully PXE boot into MDT? We have tried 4 different USB Ethernet adapters at 3 different schools, each with the same result...Checking Media Presence......Media Present......Start PXE over IPv4.It then drops back into the BIOS. Perhaps we are overlooking a BIOS setting

 

Nope- had to use offline media creator and do it all via USB

[howartp]

Has anyone managed to successfully PXE boot into MDT? We have tried 4 different USB Ethernet adapters at 3 different schools, each with the same result...

 

>>Checking Media Presence......>>Media Present......>>Start PXE over IPv4.

 

It then drops back into the BIOS. Perhaps we are overlooking a BIOS setting

 

Nope, same as you with the Dynabook E-10-G-140's we got.

[Tzap_geo]

Hey guys I have a geobook3 from a client who cannot recall their bios pwd. They have not used it for quite some time. There is a small panel on back which I thought might show the cmos battery but it's empty. Thanks!

[thomvickers]

Also thus far failed to get them to boot from PXE, same experience as RandomName above.

 

Also managed to "brick" one with the same experience as kidpressingbuttons.

[DrCheese]

Yup, these are total hot garbage - Got 20 oodd delivered recently. We've done the BIOS test thingy & yup, it kills the password. So it's a waste of time us protecting them as kids can just wipe the OS install and use it for their own devices. (Tho in theory if you register them in autopilot & they re-install windows it'll always be locked to you...)

 

I wouldn't mind, but the "DFE Protected" ones are Dell 3190's, which are more than fit for purpose. I wish I'd jumped through hoops a bit and just dealt with the hassle of getting the admin/bios password on those, rather than have subpar hardware that will last all of 5 minutes.

[kidpressingbuttons]

We have now imaged and deployed all of ours- took some messing around but got there!

 

MDT Offline media was the only thing that worked for us- im sure clonezilla another copy software would do the trick.

[hallb15]

I'm reading this thread with interest but the more I read, the more I am glad we haven't received any yet. We've not even been allowed to order any and our original allocation has been reduced from 59 to 12. By the time we do get anything, if we ever do, what spec will we be left with?

Bring back the Fizzbook Spin!

[Jonathan_Man]

Hi,

 

Has anyone managed to get the Geobook to work with Autopilot?

[ITGURU]

Just been landed with a load of these . Legacy boot enabled but still cannot get it to boot from Legacy USB to access imaging software. It will only show UEFI boot options. Anyone had success?

[browolf]

Just received 23 of these. We're leaving the default windows and setting them as business managed. We install office365 apps, sophos cloud for antivirus and webfiltering and chrome. The students log in with their office365 account.

[tadcooke]

We've just had 2 of these arrive - switch them on to a blank screen! I can just about see the windows setup dialogue from the right angle and can't adjust the brightness, anyone else had this problem? Possible fixes or are they just defective? It's like there's no backlight?

[Duranis]

I had 2 of these come in so far (more expected). After reading the horror stories I decided to just roll with whats on there, copied installer for Office 2016, chrome, avast(in silent mode) and a few other utility programs.

 

Not exactly how I would have liked to do it but was told I needed to get them out the same day so it is what it is. I didn't actually have any issues with them and they booted and loaded office programs fairly quickly. Test will be how long they last once they get into use.

[Gdog]

Hi,

 

Has anyone managed to get the Geobook to work with Autopilot?

 

 

Out of 15 managed to get 14 working fine one is still in my desk being a pain.

 

Did have a weird issue where it was failing with "Securing Device" had to Whitelist intel.com in smoothwall as after digging around it was trying to connect to intel to do some TPM wizardry. (Despite no Turn on Bitlocker policies being set in intune)

[SVSITSupport]

We've just had our allocation of these delivered today too..

We're trying to PXE boot them, but I can't even get to the checking media presence screen - I must be missing something blatantly obvious, even after scouring BIOS options for well over an hour..

any suggestions?

[AndyT2017]

We've just had our allocation of these delivered today too..

We're trying to PXE boot them, but I can't even get to the checking media presence screen - I must be missing something blatantly obvious, even after scouring BIOS options for well over an hour..

any suggestions?

 

I asked Geo the same question and got the following reply:

 

"Thank you for your enquiry, the GeoBook 1E firmware does not support PXE boot from USB Ethernet adaptors."

[Norphy]

OK, well, I've just picked up three of these pieces of crap bundles of joy from one of my schools because they were having such fun with them, they just had to share. Gits.

 

Anyway.

 

Two of them have matt screens. The third has a glossy screen. All of them would boot from a USB stick but one of them would only boot from the USB A port on the left. The firmware on one of them has actually detected the USB NIC I plugged into it and has offered to PXE boot from it, the other two haven't. I haven't tried to take it up on its offer because I'm at home and I don't have a PXE server handy but, at the very least, it does try to boot from PXE but fails immediately.

 

I'm digging further, to see if I can see any more differences.

[Norphy]

 

Well now. Different hardware revisions. Different BIOS versions. The older one PXE boots, the newer one doesn’t

[Norphy]

OK, I've actually got two different models. Both are Geobook 1E but I have GEO114 and GEO109 laptops. The GEO109 can be netbooted, I've got one done and my colleague at the school has as well. The GEO114 can't be. I've compared the two's BIOS settings and there are a lot of settings in the GEO109 which aren't in the GEO114 but everything that looks relevant to USB and networking is set identically on both and I still can't get the 114s to detect a NIC in their EFIs. Looks like we're going to have to boot these from USB to get them to build from SCCM or MDT.

[ibrown]

Geo E1 - i have some of these from the Government scheme. On two of them, i re-imaged them using our own Windows 10 pro image and our specialist software pre-installed as we are a Special Needs School. However, on both of these, it doesnt install the audio drivers. Ive tried forcing them to match the driver location on the other devces that have not been imaged, and also tried some Realtek drivers. Nothing makes them change from Multimedia Audio Controller with an exclamation and no drivers installed..

Has anyone had this problem, and managed to sort it?

Thank You

[ibrown]

OK, I've actually got two different models. Both are Geobook 1E but I have GEO114 and GEO109 laptops. The GEO109 can be netbooted, I've got one done and my colleague at the school has as well. The GEO114 can't be. I've compared the two's BIOS settings and there are a lot of settings in the GEO109 which aren't in the GEO114 but everything that looks relevant to USB and networking is set identically on both and I still can't get the 114s to detect a NIC in their EFIs. Looks like we're going to have to boot these from USB to get them to build from SCCM or MDT.

 

I couldnt get my 1E's to image over the network using USB ethernet adapters. I built mine from USB with latest Windows 10 Pro, but now the ones i have done have no sound, and the drivers dont/wont install on these ones! so frustrating!

[mthomas08]

We got some of these and to be fair.. they could be worse.

 

Our device scheme back in the day had cheap £200-£250 netbooks with the old style HDDs and these were very slow and aged badly. The geobook is far better in comparison, the build quality is better and generally they do feel good. Not the fastest thing on earth but they are netbooks. A standard SSD would have been a good idea but they are what they are. The previous HP laptops we got were perfect but assuming the geobooks cost a lot less.

 

We are not installing nothing and just dishing them out. So far we had one returned, it seemed to be setup incorrectly with passwords already set.

 

Considering they are free and do not cost us anything, I don't want to complain.